Night came on in murk and mist. As the clouds gathered thicker, Chester Kent’s face took on a more and more satisfied expression. Sedgwick, on the contrary, gloomed sorely at the suspense. Nothing could be elicited from the director of operations, who was, for him, in rather wild spirits. The tennis match seemed to have sweated the megrims out of him. He regaled his chafing friend with anecdotes from his varied career; the comedy of the dynamiter’s hair; the tragedy of the thrice fatal telephone message at the Standard Club; the drama of the orchid hunt on Weehawken Heights. From time to time he thrust a hand out of the window. Shortly after midnight there was a splatter of rain on the roof.
“Good!” said Kent, stretching elaborately. “Couldn’t be better. Life’s a fine sport!”
“Couldn’t be worse, I should think,” contradicted Sedgwick.
“Depends on the point of view, my boy. No longer can my buoyant spirit support your determined melancholy—without extraneous aid. The time has come for action. Be thankful. Get on your coat.”
Sedgwick brightened at once. “Right-o!” he said. “Get your lamps lighted and I’ll be with you.”
“No lights. Ours is a deep, dark, desperate, devilish, dime-novel design.”
“Ending, most likely, in the clutch of some night-hawk constable for violation of the highway laws.”
“Possibly. We’ve got to chance it. ‘Come into the garden, Maud,’” chanted the scientist.
Sedgwick started. “I thought we were going to motor somewhere. What about the garden?”
“About the garden? Why, somewhere about the garden there must be, I should guess, certain implements which we need in our enterprise.” He executed a solemn dance-step upon the floor and warbled,
“‘Oh, a pickax and a spade, a spade,
For and a shrouding sheet!’”
A sudden thought struck cold into the heart of Sedgwick. “Be sensible, can’t you?” he exclaimed. “What do you want with a pickax and spade!”
“My wants are few and small. If you haven’t a pick, two spades will do. In fact, they’ll be better. I was merely sticking to the text of my Hamlet.”
His shoulders slumped, his jaw slackened, and, as his figure warped into the pose of the gravedigger he wheezed out the couplet again. The cold thought froze around Sedgwick’s heart. He visioned the wet soil of Annalaka burying-ground, heaped above a loose-hasped pine box, within which went forward the unthinkable processes of earth reclaiming its own.
“Good God! Is it that?” he muttered.
The mummer straightened up. “In plain prose, do you possess two spades?” he inquired.
Speechless, Sedgwick went out into the dark, presently returning with the tools. Kent took them out and disposed them in the car.
“Get in,” he directed.
“If we had to do this, Kent,” said Sedgwick, shuddering in his seat, “why haven’t we done it before?”
The other turned on the power. “You’re on the wrong track as usual,” he remarked. “It couldn’t be done before.”
“Well, it can’t be done now,” cried the artist in sudden sharp excitement. “It won’t do. Stop the car, Kent!”
Kent’s voice took an ominously deliberate measure. “Listen,” said he; “I am going through with this—now—to-night. If you wish to withdraw—”
“That’s enough,” growled the artist. “No man alive can say that to me.”
The car slowed up. “I beg your pardon, Frank,” said Kent. “We’re both of us a little on edge to-night. This is no time for misunderstandings. What is on your mind?”
“Just this. Annalaka burying-ground is watched. Lawyer Bain said as much. Don’t you remember? He told us that the house next door is occupied by an old sleepless asthmatic who spends half her nights in her window overlooking the graves.”
The car shot forward again. “Is that all?” asked Kent.
“Isn’t it enough?”
“Hardly. We’re not going within miles of Annalaka.”
“Then our night’s work is not—” Kent could feel his companion’s revolt at the unuttered word, and supplied it for him.
“Grave robbery? It is.”
“Where?”
“In a private burying-ground on the Blairs’ estate.”
“Wilfrid Blair’s grave? When was the funeral?”
“This morning. I was among those present, though I don’t think my name will be mentioned in the papers.”
“Why should you have been there?”
“Oh, set it down to vulgar curiosity,” said Kent.
“Probably you’d say the same if I asked you the motive for this present expedition. I suppose you fully appreciate the chance we are taking?”
“Didn’t I tell you that it was rather more than a life-and-death risk?”
Something cold touched Sedgwick’s hand in the darkness. His fingers closed around a flask. “No, no Dutch courage for me. Where is this place?”
“On Sundayman’s Creek, some fourteen miles from the Nook as the motor-car flies.”
“Fourteen miles,” repeated Sedgwick musingly, following a train of thought that suddenly glowed, a beacon-light of hope. “And these Blairs have some connection with the dead woman of the cove, the woman who wore her jewels.” His fingers gripped and sank into Kent’s hard-fibered arm. “Chet, for the love of heaven, tell me! Is she one of these Blairs?”
“No nonsense, Sedgwick,” returned the other sternly. “You’re to act,—yes, and think—under orders till the night’s job is done.”
There was silence for nearly half an hour, while the car slipped, ghostlike, along the wet roadway. Presently it turned aside and stopped.
“Foot work now,” said Kent. “Take the spades and follow.”
He himself, leading the way, carried a coil of rope on his shoulders. For what Sedgwick reckoned to be half a mile they wallowed across soaked meadows, until the whisper of rain upon water came to his ears.
“Keep close,” directed his guide, and preceded him down a steep bank.
The stream was soon forded. Emerging on the farther side they scrambled up the other bank into a thicker darkness, where Sedgwick, colliding with a gnarled tree trunk, stood lost and waiting. A tiny bar of light appeared. It swept across huddled and half-obliterated mounds, marked only by the carpet of myrtle—that faithful plant whose mission it is to garland the graves of the forsaken and the forgotten—shone whitely back from the headstone of the old slave-trader, came to a rest upon a fresh garish ridge of earth, all pasty and yellow in the rain, and abruptly died.
“Too dangerous to use the lantern,” murmured Kent. “Take the near end and dig.”
Delving, even in the most favorable circumstances, is a fairly stern test of wind and muscle. In the pitch blackness, under such nerve-thrilling conditions, it was an ordeal. Both men, fortunately, were in hard training. The heavy soil flew steadily and fast. Soon they were waist deep. Kent, in a low voice, bade his fellow toiler stop.
“Mustn’t wear ourselves out at the start,” he said. “Take five minutes’ rest.”
At the end of three minutes, Sedgwick was groping for his spade. “I’ve got to go on, Chet,” he gasped. “The silence and idleness are too much for me.”
“It’s just as well,” assented his commander. “The clouds are breaking, worse luck. And some one might possibly be up and about, in the house. Go to it!”
This time there was no respite until, with a thud which ran up his arm to his heart, Kent’s iron struck upon wood. Both men stood, frozen into attitudes of attention. No sound came from the house.
“Easy now,” warned Kent, after he judged it safe to continue. “I thought that Jim dug deeper than that. Spade it out gently. And feel for the handles.”
“I’ve got one,” whispered Sedgwick.
“Climb out, then, and pass me down the rope.”
As Sedgwick gained the earth’s level, the moon, sailing from behind a cloud, poured a flood of radiance between the tree trunks. Kent’s face, as he raised it from the grave, stretching out his hand for the cord, was ghastly, but his lips smiled encouragement.
“All right! One minute, now, and we’re safe.”
“Safe!” repeated the other. “With that opened grave! I shall never feel safe again.”
From between the earthen walls Kent’s voice came, muffled. “Safe as a church,” he averred, “from the minute that we have the coffin. Take this end of the rope. Got it? Now this one. It’s fast, fore and aft. Here I come.”
With a leap he clambered out of the excavation. He took one end of the rope from Sedgwick’s hand. “All ready to haul?” he inquired in matter-of-fact tones.
“Wait. What are we going to do with this—this thing?” demanded his co-laborer. “We can never get it to the car.”
A low chuckle sounded from the shrubbery back of them. The resurrectionists stood, stricken.
“An owl,” whispered Sedgwick at length.
“No,” replied Kent in the same tone. Then, in full voice, and with vivid urgency, “Haul!”
Up came the heavy casket, bumping and grating. Even through the rope Sedgwick felt, with horror, the tumbling of the helpless sodden body within. With a powerful effort Kent swung his end up on the mound. The lantern flashed. By its gleam Sedgwick saw Kent striving to force his spade-edge under the coffin lid, to pry it loose. The chuckle sounded again.
“That’s enough,” said a heavy voice, with a suggestion of mirthful appreciation.
Sheriff Len Schlager stepped from behind a tree. He held a revolver on Kent. Sedgwick made a swift motion and the muzzle swung accurately on him.
“Steady, Frank,” warned Kent anxiously.
“I’m steady enough,” returned the other. “What a fool I was not to bring a gun.”
“Oh, no,” contradicted the scientist. “Of what use is my gun? We’re in the light, and he is in the shadow.”
“So you’ve got a gun on you, eh?” remarked the sheriff, his chuckle deepening.
“I didn’t say so.”
“No; but you gave yourself away. Hands up, please. Both of you.”
Four hands went up in the air. Kent’s face, in the light, was very downcast, but from the far corner of his mouth came the faintest ghost of a whistled melody—all in a minor key. It died away on the night air and the musician spoke in rapid French.
“Attention! La ruse gagne. Quand lui donnerai le coup de pied, battez-le á terre.”
“What’s that gibberish?” demanded Schlager.
“Very well,” said Sedgwick quickly, in the tone of one who accepts instructions. “I’ll be still enough. Go ahead and do the talking.”
“Better both keep still,” advised the deceived sheriff. “Anything you say can be used against you at the trial. And the penalty for body-snatching is twenty years in this state.”
“Yes; but what constitutes body-snatching?” murmured Kent.
“You do, I guess,” retorted the humorous sheriff. “Steady with those hands. Which pocket, please, Professor?”
“Right-hand coat, if you want my money,” answered the scientist sullenly.
“Nothing like that,” laughed the officer. “Your gun will do, at present.”
“I haven’t got any gun.”
“I heard you say it! Remember, mine is pointed at your stomach.”
“Correct place,” approved Kent, quietly shifting his weight to his left foot. “It’s the seat of human courage. Well!” as Schlager tapped pocket after pocket, without result, “you can’t say I didn’t warn you. Now, Frank!”
With the word there was a sharp spat as the heel of Kent’s heavy boot, flying up in the coup de pied of his own devising, caught the sheriff full on the wrist breaking the bones, and sending the revolver a-spin into the darkness. As instantly Sedgwick struck, swinging full-armed, and Schlager went down, half-stunned.
“Pin him, Frank,” ordered Kent.
But Sedgwick needed no directions, now that resolute action was the order of the moment. His elbow was already pressed into the sheriff’s bull neck. Schlager lay still, moaning a little.
“Good work, my boy,” approved Kent, who had retrieved the revolver.
“Who clubbed me?” groaned the fallen man. “I didn’t see no third feller. And what good’s it going to do you, anyway? There you are, and there’s the robbed grave. Exaggerated by assault on an officer of the law,” he added technically.
“That is right, too, Kent,” added Sedgwick with shaking voice. “Whatever we do, I don’t see but what we are disgraced and ruined.”
“Unless,” suggested Kent with mild-toned malice, “we rid ourselves of the only witness to the affair.”
A little gasp issued from the thick lips of Len Schlager. But he spoke with courage, and not without a certain dignity. “You got me,” he admitted quietly. “If it’s killin’—why, I guess it’s as good a way to go as any. An officer in the discharge of his duty.”
“Not so sure about the duty, Schlager,” said Kent with a change of tone. “But your life is safe enough, in any event. Pity you’re such a grafter, for you’ve got your decent points. Let him up, Sedgwick.”
Relieved of his assailant’s weight, Schlager undertook to rise, set his hand on the ground, and collapsed with a groan.
“Too bad about that wrist,” said Kent. “I’ll take you back in my car to have it looked after as soon as we’ve finished here.”
“I s’pose you know I’ll have to arrest you, just the same.”
“Don’t bluff,” retorted the other carelessly. “It wastes time. Steady! Here comes the rest of the party.”
Across the moonlit lawn moved briskly the spare alert figure of the owner of Hedgerow House. His hand grasped a long-barreled pistol. He made straight for the grove of graves. Within five yards of the willows he stopped, because a voice from behind one of them had suggested to him that he do so.
“I also am armed,” the voice added.
Hesitancy flickered in Mr. Blair’s face for a brief moment. Then, with set jaw, he came on.
“Two men of courage to deal with in a single night. That’s all out of proportion,” commented the voice with a slight laugh. “Mr. Blair; I really should dislike shooting you.”
“Who are you?” demanded Mr. Blair.
“Chester Kent.”
“What are you doing on my property at this hour?”
“Digging.”
“Ah!” It was hardly an exclamation; rather it was a contained commentary. Mr. Blair had noted the exhumed casket. “You might better have taken my offer,” he continued after a pause of some seconds. “I think, sir, you have dug the grave of your own career.”
“That remains to be seen.”
“Schlager! Are you there?”
“Yes, Mr. Blair. They’ve broken my wrist and got my gun.”
Mr. Blair took that under consideration. “It doesn’t strike me that you are much of a man-hunter,” he observed judicially. “Who are they?”
“Francis Sedgwick is the other, at your service,” answered the owner of that name.
An extraordinary convulsion of rage distorted the set features of the elderly man.
“You!” he cried. “Haven’t you done enough—without this! I would come on now if hell yawned for me.”
Stricken with amazement at the hatred in the tone, Sedgwick stood staring. But Kent stepped before the advancing man. “This won’t do,” he said firmly. “We can’t any of us afford killing.”
“I can,” contradicted Mr. Blair.
“You would gain nothing by it. If one of us is killed the other will finish the task. You know what I am here for, Mr. Blair. I purpose to open that coffin and then go.”
“No,” said the master of Hedgerow House; and it was twenty years since his “no” had been overborne.
“Yes,” returned Chester Kent quietly.
Mr. Blair’s arm rose, steady and slow, with the inevitable motion of machinery.
“If you shoot,” pointed out Kent, “you will rouse the house. Is there no one there from whom you wish to conceal that coffin?”
The arm rose higher until the muzzle of the pistol glared, like a baleful lusterless eye, into Kent’s face. Instead of making any counter-motion with the sheriff’s revolver, the scientist turned on his heel, walked to Sedgwick, and handed him the weapon. “I’m going to open the coffin, Frank,” he announced. “That pistol of Mr. Blair’s is a target arm. It has only one shot.”
“True,” put in its owner, “but I can score one hundred and twenty with it at a hundred yards’ range.”
“If he should fire, Frank, wing him. And then, whatever happens, get that casket open. That is the one thing you must do—for me and yourself.”
“But he may kill you,” cried Sedgwick in an agony of apprehension.
“He may; but I think he won’t.”
“Won’t he!” muttered the older man on an indrawn breath. “I’d rather it was the other scoundrel. But either—or both.”
Sedgwick stepped to within two paces of him. “Blair,” he said with a snarl, “you so much as think with that trigger finger, and you’re dead!”
“No, no killing, Frank,” countermanded Kent. “In his place, you’d perhaps do as he is doing.”
“Don’t take any chances, Mr. Blair,” besought the sheriff. “They’re desperate characters. Look what they done to me!”
“There’s a testimonial,” murmured Kent, as he picked up his spade, “for one who has always worked on the side of law and order.”
He worked the blade craftily under the lid and began to pry. The cover gave slightly. Mr. Blair’s pistol sank to his side. “I should have shot before warning you,” he said bitterly. “Violating graves is, I suppose, your idea of a lawful and orderly proceeding.”
The rending crackle of the hard heavy wood was his answer. Kent stooped, and struggled up bearing a shapeless heavy object in his arms. The object seemed to be swathed in sacking. Kent let it fall to the ground, where it lopped and lay. “All right,” said he, with a strong exhalation of relief. “I knew it must be. And yet—well, one never is absolute in certainty. And if I’d been wrong, I think, Frank, we could profitably have used that gun on ourselves. You can drop it, now. Come over here.”
Courageous though Sedgwick was, his nerves were of a highly sensitive order. He shuddered back. “I don’t believe I can do it, Chet.”
“You must. As a witness. Come! Brace up!”
Setting the bull’s-eye lantern down, Kent produced a pocket-knife. Sedgwick drew a long breath, and walking over, crouched, steeling his nerves against the revelation that should come when the cords should be cut and the swathings reveal their contents. “If I keel over, don’t let me tumble into the grave,” he said simply, and choked the last word off from becoming a cry of horror as he beheld his friend drive the knife-blade to the hilt in the body, and then whip it across and downward with a long ripping draw under which the harsh cloth sang hideously.
“Open your eyes! Look! Look!” cried Kent heartily.
A strong trickle of sand flowed out of the rent in the sack and spread upon the ground.
“That is all,” said Kent.
Relief clamored within Sedgwick for expression. He began to laugh in short choking spasms.
“Quiet!” warned Mr. Blair, in a broken tone of appeal. “You’ve found out the secret. God knows what you’ll do with it. But there are innocent people in the house. I see a light stirring there now. We—I must do what I may to shelter them.”
A glimmer shone from the ground floor of one of the wings. Thither Mr. Blair ran, calling out as he went. When he returned, his face was like a mask.
“Now,” said he, “what is this matter? Blackmail?”
Kent’s face withdrew, as it were, behind his inscrutable half smile. “Peace, if you will,” said he. “A truce, at least.”
“I should like to know just how much you know.”
“An offer. I will tell you whenever you are ready to tell me all that you know. I think we are mutually in need of each other.”
“I wish you were at the bottom of that pit,” retorted the other grimly. “You and your scoundrel of a friend with you.”
“Thank you for myself,” said Sedgwick. “If you were twenty years younger I would break every bone in your body for that.”
“Steady, Frank,” put in Kent. “Judge no man by his speech who has been through what Alexander Blair has been through to-night. Mr. Blair,” he added, “you’ve refused my offer. It is still open. And as an extra, I will undertake, for Mr. Sedgwick and myself, that this night’s affair shall be kept secret. And now, the next thing is to cover the evidence. Spades, Frank.”
The two men took up their tools.
“I’ll spell you,” said Alexander Blair.
While the sheriff, mourning softly over his fractured wrist, sat watching the house in case of alarm, the scientist, the painter, and the trust magnate, sweating amid the nameless graves, hurriedly reinterred the sack of clean sand which bore the name of Wilfrid Blair.
“And now,” said Chester Kent, petting his blistered palms, as the last shovelful of dirt was tamped down, “I’ll take you back with me, Mr. Sheriff, to Sedgwick’s place, and do the best I can for you till the morning. About six o’clock we’ll find you unconscious below the cliffs where you fell in the darkness. Eh?”
Despite his pain the sheriff grinned. “I guess that’s as good as the next lie,” he acquiesced. “You fight fair, Professor.”
“Then answer me a fair question. What were you doing at Hedgerow House to-night?”
“Why, you see,” drawled the official, “I saw you fishin’ that stream, and it come to my mind that you was castin’ around for more than trout that wasn’t there. But I didn’t hardly think you’d come so soon, and I was asleep when the noise of the spade on the coffin woke me.”
“Bad work and clumsy,” commented Kent with a scowl. “Come along. My car will carry three. Sedgwick can sit on the floor. Good night, Mr. Blair. All aboard, Frank.”
There was no answer.
“What became of Sedgwick?” demanded Kent.
“He was here half a minute ago; I’ll swear to that,” muttered the sheriff.
Kent stared anxiously about him. “Frank! Frank!” he called half under his breath.
“Not too loud,” besought Alexander Blair.
The clouds closed over the moon. Somewhere in the open a twig crackled. Sedgwick had disappeared.